"We should get our comrades to understand that the twofold basic task of the leading bodies of the Communist Party is to know conditions and to master policy; the former means knowing the world and the latter changing the world." -Mao Zedong, 1941, Reform our Study

[Note: Revolutionary Initiative does not have a position on Freedom Road Socialist Organization and cannot vouch for the accuracy of the author’s criticisms of that particular organization. However, the letter raises many important issues for people and organizations committed to making revolution in imperialist countries, particularly regarding how engaging in mass work relates to building a revolutionary movement.]

[Edit: This letter has been responded to by a supporter of FRSO here. That response was criticized by a supporter of the FIRE Collective here.]

“All resistance is a rupture with what is. And every rupture begins, for those engaged in it, through a rupture with oneself.” — Alain Badiou.

This is a letter to all those who genuinely want to build a movement to overthrow oppression and establish a new society that aims for the transition to communism.

At present Freedom Road Socialist Organization is not on the path to accomplishing these goals, but rather finds itself focused tightly on partial demands, base building and Democratic Party politics that do not ultimately help organize and lead a movement to overthrow this capitalist and imperialist system. It leads us and the people deeper and deeper into the logic and rationalizations of bourgeois democracy.

After two years of being an active member, I have concluded that the current political trajectory of FRSO will only yield further from the goal of liberation and I now resign from that organization.

At the heart of this trajectory exists a bundle of assumptions about how fundamental radical social transformation can occur, and how we understand the role of the liberal-capitalist Democratic Party. This line promotes only structural reforms and defense of the capitalist welfare state, while obfuscating line differences within the organization. In practice this has meant concentration of cadres in NGOs, as board members in progressive nonprofits, and as union bureaucracies. This line is encapsulated in the statement:

“If the people don’t vote it [socialism] in or bring it about through mass national strikes and other popular forms, it will not happen!” 1

This political line cannot imagine rebellions, insurrections, and protracted conflicts that would make the old system ungovernable. Instead, stubbornly insists that voting or mass strikes will be the only possible methods for achieving state power. In a revisionist CP-style politics, we are told to “beat the far-right,” when in practice we know this always meant that we capitulate to liberals and surrender any radical or revolutionary aims. The enemy is defined as the far-right Republicans and Tea Party drones, and not the capitalist system and its empire. Continue reading “Letter of Resignation from Freedom Road Socialist Organization”

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1. We strongly condemn the traitorous revisionist ruling bloc of the Chinese Communist Party and its policy of secretive suppression of our party!

On 26 December 2008, our party gave out the pamphlet “To all the people of China” that declares that “the peoples of China have the right to rise up against the traitorous revisionist ruling bloc of the Chinese Communist Party” in the central districts of cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. By doing this we have “dared to touch the tiger’s ass”!

Afterwards we engaged in more propaganda online and in other cities. This revolutionary action of our party has resulted in a strong political wave against the traitorous revisionist ruling bloc of the Chinese Communist Party, and managed to beat down the arrogant air of the revisionist ruling bloc.

Smash Revisionism!

This is the clarion call for a great revolutionary movement among the Chinese proletariat against capitalist restoration; this is the signal flare to mobilise the people to strike against the crimes conducted by the traitorous revisionist ruling bloc; to peel away the false skin of the revisionists, and to engage in a people’s revolutionary war through both words and actions.

The pamphlet of our party “To all the people of China” not only received great attention within China, and to a great extent served to wake up and stimulate the Chinese proletarian class, but it also triggered a lot of international political responses. “Radio Free Asia” and “Voice of America” all made reports about us. Reactionary forces both inside and outside of China immediately felt threatened by our pamphlet, and started to attack our party and offered strategies to the ruling regime of China. Continue reading “The Ten Declarations of the Maoist Communist Party of China (MCPC)”

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My declaration of withdrawal from the Party
A letter from July 19, 2001.

My name is Zhang Laushi, born in 1928 April to a common peasant family on Gaozhou Peninsula, Shandong Province. At age 14, as a youth brigade leader, I joined the war to resist Japanese aggression and in the mid of the Huihai campaign when I was 20, I joined the Chinese Communist Party.

It has been more than half a century now. In the eyes of today’s young generation, I also can be counted as an old revolutionary.

After the Huihai campaign, I again participated in the Cross Yangzi River Campaign (Against KMT forces). At that time I was a corporal. In the Anti-US-Help-Korea War, I served in the 68th Army as a communication corporal, got wounded, transferred to western Henan Province a mountainous county to be Director of Post and Telephone Department and Party Secretary. I held that post for 20 years and retired as a technical category cadre.

Several decades of life in revolution and war have allowed me to do a little work for the people and the Party. The Party and the people gave me more than a little honor. During the liberation war and the Korea War I have several times served with distinction and merit, received commendations and military medals which decorated my chest of my uniform. Even now I treasure my uniform of war, often taking it out to reminisce with deep emotion.

I say this not out of self satisfaction or self aggrandizement. Thinking of my comrades in arms, half of whom were sacrificed. Their lively faces still fresh in my eyes, getting stronger as time passes. Erbi, Anxum, Yuedi and there was another one we called Older Brother, were all lost to us forever in one minor action. The Huihai campaign was victorious, but our minor action in it was very tragic and our sacrifice huge. During the Korea War, in the Battle of Flying Tiger Mount, our unit became lost from division headquarters because of dense fog and headed for the wrong direction and suffered over 50% loss. I was wounded in that battle. Compared to the sacrificed comrades, I was much more fortunate. I have lived 50 some years longer than they. Compared to them, I feel ashamed that I was not together with them. What good fortune it would be to be with my life death comrades, to talk about our aspirations, our beliefs, our struggles. What else do I have to be self satisfied? I only regret that I contributed too little to the Party and the people, unworthy of the sacrifice of my departed comrades. So why Am I withdrawing from the Party? Continue reading “Veteran Maoist Resigns from Communist Party of China”